


Let Me Let You Go

by Shestoolazytologin



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: A LOT of Angst, Angst, Ben is 32, Break Up, Don’t say I didn’t warn you, Error 404: no happiness found, F/M, Modern AU, Occasional Alcohol, Pain Train, Rey is 22, Reylo - Freeform, Song: When the Party's Over (Billie Eilish), This will hurt, age gap, blame Shannon, but Lewis Capaldi’s cover, enter at your own risk, if you’re looking for fluff this isn’t the thing for you, lots of issues there, relationship drama, welcome to hell - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-25
Updated: 2020-04-25
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:41:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23201881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shestoolazytologin/pseuds/Shestoolazytologin
Summary: But nothin' is better sometimesOnce we've both said our goodbyesLet's just let it goLet me let you go
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 14
Kudos: 37
Collections: The Perfect Date - Pink Ladies Spring Exchange





	Let Me Let You Go

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shuhannon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shuhannon/gifts).



> Shannon, this is for you 😘
> 
> Many thanks to the wonderful kaybohls for the beta and the moodie ❤️

[ ](https://ibb.co/w05czxb)

**Drink**

He stares at the empty apartment, letting the silence settle heavily on his heart. She’s done it again, and he supposes he should be used to it by now — she’s always doing this. He can’t fix her, heaven knows he’s tried, and he isn’t what she deserves anyway. Too broken, too negative, too much of everything she isn’t. 

He grabs a glass and pours himself a drink. He can’t get her out of his mind, so maybe  _ going _ out of his mind will expel any lingering memory of her. The feel of her touch and the smell of her skin still linger, and he wonders if drinking her presence out of his mind will ever actually bear any positive results. 

He knows it won’t. 

The tumbler is soon empty, and so is his heart. 

Her memory is still alive.   


* * *

**Poison**

She observes him from afar, watching his every move. He’s rooted himself deep in her mind and every deepest recess of her soul. So deep that she knows simply leaving will never be enough. She’s poison, and she ruins and kills everything she touches. 

It’s been a long few months without him. He walks out of the coffee shop, cup in hand, and lifts his eyes to look at her before she manages to take a step backward and into the shadows from where she has been keeping an eye on him for the past 156 days. 

She walks away fast, morphing into a run, and she’s cornered before she can even process it. 

She hates his long legs. 

They fall into a strange relationship afterward. They get tangled in each other’s web, but she doesn’t move back in. She doesn’t know what they are, but they’re not dating. 

It’s more like friends who call each other to fuck whenever there’s an itch to scratch. 

She knows she should leave, distance herself. Save him from ruining his life with her. 

She can’t. 

* * *

**Lies**

His apartment is empty. Dark. Cold. There isn’t a soul inside, and he’s not expecting there to be. He’s been on his own for a while. Rey comes and goes whenever she pleases, and when she does, it’s only to blow him or get herself off. He's given her permission to do with him as she pleases. It doesn't do anything to fill the void inside him. It's his own fault.

It’s okay. He’s okay with this. He doesn’t mind it, being to her whatever she needs him to. He will gladly shatter his own heart to bypass the pieces into her own fractured soul. 

He doesn’t mind it. 

Right?

**X**

She slides down against the door, breath coming out in shallow huffs. She had told herself it would be the last time, the last time she tied him to herself with nothing definite in their relationship. She had to say goodbye, had to let him go, to find happiness as far away from her as he can. She isn’t what he wants, what he deserves. She will ruin him, wring him dry until he’s but a shell of himself. She will gladly do that to herself first. 

She had to make him let her go. He can’t keep himself tied to empty shells. 

Goodbye was the right call, the right move.  _ It will get better,  _ she tells herself. He will be happy, and it will get better. 

So why does it all feel like a lie?

* * *

**_Dark_ **

Days turn into weeks. Weeks turn into months. 

He’s…not sure what he is. Certainly not a human. A shell, maybe? Shells are pretty, and his life is anything but. 

Rey was — is — pretty. Rey is sunlight and moonlight all wrapped in one. Burns your eyes and blinds you, while captivating you all the same. She hurts you, but you can’t stop looking at her. You can’t stop looking  _ for  _ her. 

She hurts him, but he can’t stop needing her. 

He says nothing as he takes in the silence of his own apartment. The blinds are down. They’ve been down for…he has lost track of time. Could be days. Could be weeks. He hasn’t bought food in what feels like even longer, the sharpness of his collarbones hurting his own forearm when he lies on his side and tries to sleep at night. 

Everything is in black and white. 

_ Pretty similar to my own life,  _ he thinks as he takes another sip of his scotch. 

He thinks it’s his fourth, but who’s bothering counting?

**X**

Days, weeks, months. 

She has lost track of time. She tells herself she isn’t aware of how long it’s been without Ben, but her heart knows it’s been a little over 200 days without him. 

Life sucks, plainly put. She wakes up, goes to work, let’s her day pass very robotically, goes home, goes to sleep. Rinse and repeat. 

Everything is cold. The sun disappeared behind pitch-black clouds long ago. It feels like an eternal night, one she is stuck in and can’t get out of, and it’s all her own doing. 

She tries to tell herself it’s okay. This is how it’s supposed to be. You either have someone, or you don’t — you can’t keep them tied to yourself forever. 

_ It’s okay,  _ she tells herself.  _ This is fine. I’m fine.  _

_ Are you, really?  _ answers a small voice in the back of her head and her chin and lower lip wobble. 

She knows it’s a lie. She isn’t okay. 

She loves Ben. She breathes him, he’s the blood her heart pumps tirelessly day and night. She will love Ben until her last breath, when she’s closing her eyes one last time all alone, just how she wanted it, thinking about him, and what-ifs, and could haves. 

It’s like a switch, instantaneous, spurned solely by her traitorous heart. 

She showers for the first time in a week. Puts on something freshly washed for the first time in two. 

She’s out the door faster than lightning. 

* * *

There’s a knock on the door he can’t be bothered to get. Why should he? 

He ignores it, but it’s persistent, getting louder and stronger by the second. 

He takes a sip of his scotch when it stops. 

_ Good,  _ he thinks.  _ Go away.  _

He takes another sip of his scotch when he hears it. Someone is trying to unlock his door with methods less than conventional. Someone who is good at picking locks. 

He grabs the empty scotch tumbler and walks to the door with the stealth of someone who doesn’t have his weight and height. The lock gives, and the door opens. 

He smells her before he sees her. 

He hears her before he braces himself to. 

“Ben?”

The hand holding the tumbler is weak, and the heavy crystal bottle slides out of his grip, rolling on the carpeted floor with a  _ thud _ . 

She’s there, corporeal. She’s lost weight, more so than she should. She looks skinnier than the first time he ever saw her — when she was nineteen and he was twenty-nine — and three years later he never thought he’d be saying this, but Rey is full of both pleasant  _ and  _ unpleasant surprises. 

“Rey,” is all he says, before they both collapse into each other’s arms, sobbing and holding on for dear life. He doesn’t know what’s happening, doesn’t know why she’s back when she made it clear her goodbye was definite, but she’s there, and like the desperate human he is, he lets her sob into his chest as he sobs into her hair. 

* * *

Rey hasn’t left for over 474 days. 


End file.
